Overview

A perfect gift for new parents, birthday celebrations, and happy occasions of all kinds, this collection of five beloved Beginner Books by Dr. Seuss—The Cat in the Hat, One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish, Green Eggs and Ham, Hop on Pop, and Fox in Socks—will be cherished by young and old alike. Ideal for reading aloud or reading alone, they will begin a child on the adventure of a lifetime!

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Overview

A perfect gift for new parents, birthday celebrations, and happy occasions of all kinds, this collection of five beloved Beginner Books by Dr. Seuss—The Cat in the Hat, One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish, Green Eggs and Ham, Hop on Pop, and Fox in Socks—will be cherished by young and old alike. Ideal for reading aloud or reading alone, they will begin a child on the adventure of a lifetime!

Meet the Author

More by this Author

THEODOR SEUSS GEISEL—aka Dr. Seuss—is one of the most beloved children’s book authors of all time. From The Cat in the Hat to Oh, the Places You’ll Go!, his iconic characters, stories, and art style have been a lasting influence on generations of children and adults. The books he wrote and illustrated under the name Dr. Seuss (and others that he wrote but did not illustrate, including some under the pseudonyms Theo. LeSieg and Rosetta Stone) have been translated into thirty languages. Hundreds of millions of copies have found their way into homes and hearts around the world. Dr. Seuss’s long list of awards includes Caldecott Honors for McElligot’s Pool, If I Ran the Zoo, and Bartholomew and the Oobleck, the Pulitzer Prize, and eight honorary doctorates. Works based on his original stories have won three Oscars, three Emmys, three Grammys, and a Peabody.

Biography

Now that generations of readers have been reared on The Cat in the Hat and Fox in Socks, it's easy to forget how colorless most children's books were before Dr. Seuss reinvented the genre. When the editorial cartoonist Theodor Seuss Geisel wrote And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street in 1936, the book was turned down by 27 publishers, many of whom said it was "too different." Geisel was about to burn his manuscript when it was rescued and published, under the pen name Dr. Seuss, by a college classmate.

Over the next two decades, Geisel concocted such delightfully loopy tales as The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins and Horton Hears a Who. Most of his books earned excellent reviews, and three received Caldecott Honor Awards. But it was the 1957 publication of The Cat in the Hat that catapulted Geisel to celebrity.

Rudolf Flesch's book Why Johnny Can't Read, along with a related Life magazine article, had recently charged that children's primers were too pallid and bland to inspire an interest in reading. The Cat in the Hat, written with 220 words from a first-grade vocabulary list, "worked like a karate chop on the weary little world of Dick, Jane and Spot," as Ellen Goodman wrote in The Detroit Free Press. With its vivid illustrations, rhyming text and topsy-turvy plot, Geisel's book for beginning readers was anything but bland. It sold nearly a million copies within three years.

Geisel was named president of Beginner Books, a new venture of Random House, where he worked with writers and artists like P.D. Eastman, Michael Frith, Al Perkins, and Roy McKie, some of whom collaborated with him on book projects. For books he wrote but didn't illustrate, Geisel used the pen name Theo LeSieg (LeSieg is Geisel spelled backwards).

As Dr. Seuss, he continued to write bestsellers. Some, like Green Eggs and Ham and the tongue-twisting Fox in Socks, were aimed at beginning readers. Others could be read by older children or read aloud by parents, who were often as captivated as their kids by Geisel's wit and imagination. Geisel's visual style appealed to television and film directors, too: The animator Chuck Jones, who had worked with Geisel on a series of Army training films, brought How the Grinch Stole Christmas! to life as a hugely popular animated TV special in 1966. A live-action movie starring Jim Carrey as the Grinch was released in 2000.

Many Dr. Seuss stories have serious undertones: The Butter Battle Book, for example, parodies the nuclear arms race. But whether he was teaching vocabulary words or values, Geisel never wrote plodding lesson books. All his stories are animated by a lively sense of visual and verbal play. At the time of his death in 1991, his books had sold more than 200 million copies. Bennett Cerf, Geisel's publisher, liked to say that of all the distinguished authors he had worked with, only one was a genius: Dr. Seuss.

Good To Know

The Cat in the Hat was written at the urging of editor William Spaulding, who insisted that a book for first-graders should have no more than 225 words. Later, Bennett Cerf bet Geisel $50 that he couldn't write a book with just 50 words. Geisel won the bet with Green Eggs and Ham, though to his recollection, Cerf never paid him the $50.

Geisel faced another challenge in 1974, when his friend Art Buchwald dared him to write a political book. Geisel picked up a copy of Marvin K. Mooney Will You Please Go Now! and a pen, crossed out each mention of the name "Marvin K. Mooney," and replaced it with "Richard M. Nixon." Buchwald reprinted the results in his syndicated column. Nine days later, President Nixon announced his resignation.

The American Heritage Dictionary says the word "nerd" first appeared in print in the Dr. Seuss book If I Ran the Zoo: "And then, just to show them, I'll sail to Ka-Troo / And bring back an It-Kutch a Preep and a Proo / A Nerkle a Nerd and a Seersucker, too!" The word "grinch," after the title character in How the Grinch Stole Christmas, is defined in Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary as a killjoy or spoilsport.

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Wonderful selection

I love that this set combined a variety of books from the simpler ones like Hop on Pop to the more complicated Fox in Sox. Of course it had our favorites- Cat in the Hat and and Green Eggs and Ham.
This is a good collection for reading aloud to toddlers and for little ones who want to begin reading along.

6 out of 6 people found this review helpful.

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majmz

Posted December 19, 2010

Awesome Books with great price!

I simply love Dr. Seuess Books. Even my children love it, especially my 5 year old son that loves to rhyme! I purchased 10 sets of these as Christmas Gifts for my sons' classes! Plus, the price is awesome, purchase 2 with 1 free gift! How can you beat that! Classic books that my kids would remember for the rest of their lives :) I am going to buy more to stack them as birthday presents for children!

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

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Michyblank

Posted October 11, 2009

Great Book Collection!

This is a great beginner book collection! My daugther adores me reading these books to her and I love that I can share my memories of Dr. Suess with her.

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

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gierut

Posted January 11, 2013

Highly recommended

I purchased these for my grandson. He just turned 2 and I grew up with Dr. seuss and I remember these books. They get your imagination going. My gtandson loves them.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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Such fun for an early reader

Is there anyone who doesn't enjoy Dr.Seuss? His books are timeless. A great collection to read to a child, who will quickly enjoy reading them to you!

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Anonymous

Posted April 12, 2013

A Must-Have Collection!

This is a great collection for early readers! Classic Dr. Seuss!

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Packerbren

Posted March 25, 2013

Dr. Seuss is the GREATEST children's author ever! I read them t

Dr. Seuss is the GREATEST children's author ever! I read them to my children when they were young, and now that I have Grandkids, I will be reading these to them! They will always associate me with these books, and that makes me smile!

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Anonymous

Posted March 22, 2013

A MUST for beginning "libraries"!

We include both the first and second volumes of Dr. Seuss's Beginner Book Collections, along with an accompanying plush figure, in the book baskets that we create for the new babies in our family. Since we still have the Dr. Seuss books that our adult children enjoyed, and our children have read them to THEIR children, we know that these volumes will be treasured by our new young families. It's become a traditional gift that the young mothers anticipate.

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Anonymous

Posted December 28, 2012

Right on time!

Highly Recommended

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mamabear1

Posted September 14, 2012

Oh....the rhyming!

For children of all ages. My 20 month old granddaughter cannot keep her hands off these books. Instant favorites.

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